‘Green News Report’ – July 22, 2010

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: China, drowning in oil — literally; Bobby’s berms a bust?; Gulf waters now safe for fishing?!? (except when it’s exploding) … PLUS: Waytago, oil companies! (Did we just say that?!) … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Kansas heat wave kills 2000 cattle; Hundreds of dead penguins wash up on Brazilian coast; Does Egypt own the Nile? water battle brewing; Poo Power: generating electricity from sewage?; 3 of every 4 oil and gas lobbyists worked for federal government; Bee massacre at SF farm; Cool roofs save money, energy, and directly reduce warming; Judge halts oil development on Alaska’s Chukchi Sea …PLUS: Busted: Five air-conditioning myths …

STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…

• China’s Environment — Record Floods, Toxic Spills:
• More Than 700 Dead in Chinese Floods
  (CNN)
• Pipeline repaired as China works to contain spill (AP)
• Toxic spill from China copper mine spreads (AFP):
  A toxic pollution spill from a mine operated by China’s top gold producer Zijin Mining Group has spread to a second province, threatening the fishing industry there, state media said Tuesday
  ….
  During its rapid expansion, Zijin “was overconfident, had a lack of crisis awareness and did not properly handle the balance between economic efficiency, ecological benefit and public interest”.

  Investigators have determined that the initial leak of 9,100 cubic metres (320,000 cubic feet) of waste water from a sludge pond had flowed through an “illegally built passage” into the Ting river.

  The company at first blamed heavy rains for the toxic spill, but later released preliminary findings of a government probe that found it had ignored warnings that the flow of waste water discharge at the mine was too high.

• Chinese Miner Zijin Apologizes for Leak (Wall St. Journal)
• Official: ‘Severe threat’ as China oil spill grows (AP)
• Clean-up crews use bare hands against China oil spill (AFP)
• China uses oil-eating bacteria to clean up spill (AFP)
• Typhoon Chanthu Slams Into Southern China Coast (CNN)
• The LATEST in the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf:
• Ships Set to Leave Spill Site as Storm Brews (NY Times)
• Oil Companies Plan Rapid Response System to Oil Spills: Four large oil companies are committing $1 billion to set up a rapid response system to deal with oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico’s deep waters. The effort is aimed partly at deflecting efforts by some state and federal officials to stop or severely restrict drilling in the gulf in the wake of the BP spill.” (NY Times)
• BP Plugs Gulf Relief Well As Storm Approaches (NOLA.com)
• Judge refuses to reinstate first oil drill ban (Reuters)
• For Oysters, A ‘Remedy’ Turned Catastrophe: The release of large amounts of Mississippi River freshwater in an attempt to push oil back out to sea has backfired. The lower salinity is killing the oysters it was meant to save. (NYT Green)
• Workers on Doomed Rig Voiced Concern About Safety: A confidential survey of workers on the Deepwater Horizon in the weeks before the oil rig exploded showed that many of them were concerned about safety practices and feared reprisals if they reported mistakes or other problems. (NY Times)
• Tropical depression halts work on BP’s leaky well: Worse yet, the government’s spill chief said foul weather could require reopening the cap that has contained the oil for nearly a week, allowing oil to gush into the sea again for days while engineers wait out the storm. (AP)
• OP-ED: Reckless calls at Deepwater Horizon:
  BP and Transocean still are trying to shift blame onto one another for the April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, as has been evident during the investigative hearings going on in Kenner this week. But the hearings in front of a Marine Board investigative panel have revealed many glaring problems with how the two firms were handling the difficult Macondo well. More and more it seems that both BP and Transocean ignored the law as well as multiple warning signs in developing the well and took shortcuts that may have contributed to the disaster.
• Hearings: BP Did Not Suspend Drilling Operations After Report of Leaking Blowout Preventer (NOLA.com)
• House approves deepwater-drilling safety, oil-spill cleanup bills (NOLA.com)
• Hearings: Still Unclear Why Key Safety Tests Bypassed on Rig (NOLA.com)
• Hearings: Killed worker told wife he was working on oil well ‘from hell’ (NOLA.com)
• Engineer Details Problems Before Rig Exploded in Gulf of Mexico (Wall St. Journal)
• U.S. Issues First Shallow Water Drilling Permit: The U.S. Interior Department issued its first shallow-water drilling permit since offshore exploration companies were required to meet two sets of new safety regulations in response to the BP oil spill, a department official said on Monday. (Reuters)
• Oil spill claims administrator Kenneth Feinberg says difficult issues will be addressed fairly (NOLA.com)
• Jindal’s Berm Boondoggle: Berms Failing, Water Exploding, But Fishing is OK!
• PHOTOS: Chandeleur sand berm segment shrinking like a wool sweater in hot water (LA Coast Post)
• Bobby Jindal’s ‘Barrier Islands’ Are Washing Away (Wonk Room)
• Bobby Jindal’s ’emergency berm’ and $400 million barrier island project disaster (Gulf Of Mexico Oil Crisis blog)
• Berm Notice: Jindal demagogues sand barrier ’solution’ that probably won’t help, will take many months, use up valuable resources, vanish in the first storm — and many scientists think will make things worse: Coastal geologist: “I have yet to speak to a scientist who thinks the project will be effective.” (Climate Progress)
• Heretics of Dune: Environmentalists Slam Jindal Berm Plan (NOLA Defender)
• Bobby Jindal’s Berm Warfare (Mother Jones)
• Sand Berm Approved to Fight Oil; Scientists Skeptical (Science)
• Louisiana Re-opens Gulf to Sport Fishing (MSNBC)
• Millions Of Fish Wash Ashore In Gulfport: Not Yet Known If Oil Spill Was Factor (WDSU Gulfport, MI)

‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…

• Kansas Heat Wave Kills 2000 Cattle: “It is all cattle in feedlots. It is more the humidity than the heat,” Ken Powell, environmental scientist with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said of the more than 2,000 cattle deaths. (Retuers)
• Hundreds of penguins wash up on Brazilian coast: Necropsies performed on many of the penguins show that they had no food in their stomachs and probably starved to death, Nascimento said, adding that cold weather probably contributed to their deaths. (CNN))
• Does Egypt Own The Nile? A Battle Over Precious Water: A dispute between Egypt and upstream African nations has brought to the fore a long-standing controversy over who has rights to the waters of the Nile. The outcome could have profound consequences for the ecological health of the river and for one of the world’s largest tropical wetlands. (Yale 360)
• 3 Of Every 4 Oil And Gas Lobbyists Worked For Federal Government: Three out of every four lobbyists who represent oil and gas companies previously worked in the federal government, a proportion that far exceeds the usual revolving-door standards on Capitol Hill. (Washington Post)
• Nanotech coatings offer possibility of brown electricity from sewage: While much of the focus on renewable electricity production focuses on green alternatives, a team of engineers at Oregon State University is looking at ways to improve electricity production from a ‘brown’ source — namely sewage. The engineers found that using new coatings on the anodes of microbial electrochemical cells they were able to increase the electricity production from sewage about 20 times. (Gizmag)
• Bee Massacre at San Francisco’s Hayes Valley Farm: At some point between July 20 and 21, a pesticide was intentionally sprayed into into the entrances and ventilation holes of the hives, according to the Hayes Valley Farm blog. In each of the two destroyed hives, up to 100,000 individuals bees perished. The third hive lost more than half of its population. (Triple Pundit)
• Judge Halts Oil, Gas Development on Alaska’s Chukchi Sea: A federal judge on Wednesday stopped companies from developing oil and gas wells on billions of dollars in leases off Alaska’s northwest coast, saying the federal government failed to follow environmental law before it sold the rights. (AP)
• Cool roofs save money, save energy, cut pollution and directly reduce warming!:
  What wildly underfunded climate solution can achieve all of these goals simultaneously:

  * Slow global warming by increasing the reflectivity of the Earth (geo-engineering)
  * Reduce local temperatures in the hottest cities (adaptation)
  * Reduce fossil CO2 emissions (mitigation)
  * Save U.S. consumers and businesses billions of dollars in energy costs
  * Reduce urban smog and hence cardio-pulmonary disease
  * Create more than 100,000 jobs in two years?

• Five air-conditioning myths busted (Conscious Consumer):
  Myth: Cranking your air conditioner up high (by setting your unit’s thermostat significantly below the temperature you want to achieve) will cool your house faster.

  Fact: Your air conditioner will deliver cool air at the same rate no matter how low you go on the thermostat setting. If you turn the thermostat to 50 degrees when you want it to get to 72 degrees, your room won’t get cooler any faster … If you are driving from New York to Philadelphia and you set your GPS to Washington D.C. you aren’t going to get to Philadelphia any faster.